e-mail scammers

various scams via email that are targeting photographers

Photographers are more and more becoming the target for scammers and con artists. They come in all kinds of ways. Really, it’s the Wild West out there!

The most prevalent scam is where the photographer is asked if they are available for a date … and they just want to throw money at you and book you, without even finding out details.

One of the things that reveal them, is the phrasing. For example, if they say “your city”, then it is 100% guaranteed to be a scam. Other vague descriptions like that should also start the alarm bells.

how these scams work

The scamming method here is that they want to book you for a certain date, and then pay via bank guaranteed check or via credit card.

The scam comes into play in that they over-pay, and then ask for a refund of that portion of the money. The bank guaranteed check of course is fake, or the credit card they used is stolen. Another clue is that you often have to pay the scammer via Western Union Money Transfer. That’s often a consistent part to this type of scam.

The end result is that the photographer who is naive enough to fall for this, is out of pocket by whatever amount they “refunded” to the scammers.

You’ll encounter variations of this, but there are always specific patterns to it that will reveal you’re dealing with a con artist / criminal / scammer.

scam – photography domains for sale

Here is an example that crops up regularly, where a domain with important keywords is offered for sale. WebnameSolution is just one of the companies that try their devious hand at this.

The best advice I can give here, is that you do your homework first and find out who actually owns the domain name! Do a whois on the domain, and use other methods to see if the domain is legitimately for sale.